County4x4

Shrapnel from bracken clearing had exactly the same effect on the bloke I spent many years working with.

What he said! Friends of ours had all sorts of problems with theirs - burning briquettes and kiln dried 4x4s. Had a lower oven with a puddle of tar on the base of it at one stage. Installer kept telling them the wood was too wet, and we knew damn well it was well under the recommended maximum moisture level. Eventually a mate of mine (Fahrenheit on here) diagnosed the problem in a minute flat from about 120 miles away, and they turned up the return stat temperature by about five degrees or so. This totally transformed the thing - stove would run right up to the top of the temperature dial if required, and the whole thing is running way cleaner. Andy

I don't normally touch charcoal briquettes with a barge pole since I discovered the cocktail of garbage they add to make them stick together - but we did get some amazing results from charcoal briquettes produced by charcoaling the firewood briquettes we deal with. These of course were briquettes to start with - so no added ingredients at all, and THEN turned into charcoal. They were originally intended as a greener substitute for solid fossil fuels - having about the same energy content as anthracite ( weight for weight of course). We sent some samples off to some guys from the British BBQ Society and they said they'd never thought it was possible to get so much heat for such a long period from any type of charcoal.

I honestly don't know how it works Jon! There are some stoves such as those made in the UK by Burley that have a stainless steel grid in the top of the firebox, which acts as a catalyst of sorts and burns off any smoke particles passing through it once it's up to temperature - but in this case the unit is as far from the heat source as you can get. They are quite expensive, but I know a couple of the guys from the sweeps forum have been in contact with the manufacturer and the price has been reduced a fair bit since then. I also believe that if you contact a sweep who has joined them as a trade partner, you may well be able to get a further discount. The sweep will get a commission true enough - but certainly the talk on the forum has been within the trade sort of thing rather than aimed at getting people to buy something - and the guys that have used them have been genuinely impressed. If you want to have a look for yourself the forum is at U.C.S. Forum - just search for Flue cube and you'll find the posts. Cheers, Andy

This item has been discussed at some length on the Chimney sweeps forum, and one of the members has actually bought one to evaluate on his own stove at home. It's fair to say that before the test he was sceptical at best: "lol how on earth could this work if it can burn smoke how will that help to keep the flue below it clean it can have no effect on how the stove burns its impossible" However, he's now bought one and used it for a while and says there's no way he's going to be removing it: "okay i have been testing this cowl for a few weeks now and although i was very sceptical trust me its amazing , benefits are the stove lights faster and reaches a higher temperature , the flame pattern is much improved ,much less ash is produced and although i cant really see any visible burning of flue gasses smoke inside the cowl it for sure produces much less smoke , my wood is perfect so hardly any with out it but almost none with it you can tell it is working all four corners go petrol colours you would swear i have had a chimney fire" Since then a couple of other sweeps have tried them with similar results - so the opinion seems to be that we don't quite know how or why it works, but it does! Andy

This is why unlined chimneys should have decent sized access doors in the register plate, so that we can get the correct sized brush into the chimney, and also, and just as importantly, so we can remove all the crap once the chimney has been swept, rather than leaving it sitting in a nice heap right above the stove cooking nicely and just waiting for some sparks to set it off! I'm using power sweeping equipment on most lined chimneys these days - but it's well over £400 so probably not an option for the householder just doing his own chimney! The problem of the nylon flexi rods which are sold for sweeping liners is that they just tend to flex if the brush comes up against any heavy deposits, rather than pushing the brush through. "Normal" chimney rods are not always a good idea on liners - especially the cheap ebay liners which often just unwind themselves if you're not careful. The powersweeping kit is more like a strimmer head than a brush, and tends to make pretty short work of most build ups, without putting a load of pressure on the liner either sideways or in a linear direction - which can push liners off stove collars if they're not fitted right. Gotta say I'd still recommend getting a decent sweep in - you'll generally pay him or her a lot less than you pay the window cleaner over a year - and you'll have peace of mind too. I did say "decent" sweep though - there are just as many dodgy operators in this game as in the tree game - including some big companies who really should know better! Andy

Spot on Andy - you can't beat the great British public for making a crisis out of a rumour. Thing is too, if there is eventually a strike, all these people panic buying will have probably run out by then anyway! The government haven't helped a bit with their comments, but it's the public who have made the crisis. I did also read somewhere that the huge extra tax income from this panic will reflect in the end of year figures for the country, so then the gummint will be able to tell us how well they're doing! There's also talk of the whole thing being engineered by the govt to try and reduce the effect of any future drivers strike, their thinking being that if they have a "controlled panic" now - yeah right - we'll all be better prepared if the tanker boys do come out. Joe Public doesn't do controlled panicing though - we like to panic proerly!

Ian Taylor at http://www.lakelandcoppiceproducts.co.uk/is who we buy ours from. He's based in Kendal. Andy

Are you wanting to produce the beams etc from round timber yourself David? If not then a good part of Ian's work is doing exactly that - there are some pics on his website at lakeland coppice products , Cleft oak specialists,charcoal and firewood in the Lake District

You could try Ian Taylor at Lakeland coppice products mate, though he tends to actually make the products himself, rather than just selling on the timber for someone else to do it, so don't know if that would be good for you. You can get him on 07813 696161 Andy

We have one of these taking the flue from our workshop stove through the roof - had no problems at all with it. Dektite high temperature workshop flue pipe roof flashings Andy

I've heard nothing more from them since our initial meeting - so at least they're not being pushy. If the ones going to Sussex are the same, I reckon most customers will struggle a bit using them in a stove - they're not that easy to light, and they tend to need a fairly high draught - more than many stoves will provide. Also, being very ashy, the bottom air inlet on most stoves will be blocked off pretty quickly by the ash they produce. With the best will in the world, I wouldn't recommend them to stove owners. There's also the smell issue - they have quite a musty dirty mouldy sort of niff about them - and if you store them by the fire - you can soon smell them around the house. Andy

This problem is not at all uncommon mate - friends had exactly the same with their wood only Esse. My installer mate (Fahrenheit on here) diagnosed it over the phone from a hundred miles away in the end! Seems a lot of installers can't be bothered learning all the ins and outs of wet installations - and this was the problem. The stat that controlled the water returning to the stove was set too low by the installer - which meant that the water was circulating too much and never getting hot enough in the stove. In turn, this meant the firebox was running very cool and condensing an awful lot of tar which clogged the flueways, and that made the stove even more sluggish until it would hardly go at all. This process only took a week or two from the stove going in - and they ended up with pools of liquid tar in the bottom oven. Needless to say, as this was their dream stove and they'd paid about £6k for it plus over a grand for a big piece of handmade glass to go behind it, they weren't right happy! Installer had been called back a number of times and insisted the problem was down to wet wood - which was hardly likely as they were using mainly kiln dried offcuts and a few of my briquettes at less than 8%! In the end, the Esse technical guy was called out - and he said to turn up the return stat - which is exactly what Fahrenheit had said from the other side of the country! Installer said it wouldn't make any difference - Esse's fella disagreed with him. I cleaned out all the flueways and swept the chimney (again!) and that was that - oven temp right round the dial, clean flueways - sorted. It's been sound as a pound ever since. Andy

The trouble is that there is as much variation in briquettes as there is in logs, and depending on the way they've been made and the machine they've been made in, they could be great or they could be rubbish. We've had "home made" briquettes from a flooring manufacturer in the past, and while the ingredients were spot on, the cheap second hand adapted paper press they were using made very soft briquettes - and we could get through 15 kilos an evening with no bother at all. With good briquettes in the same stove, we probably use no more than 6 kilos in the same period. This made the "cheap" briquettes actually almost twice the price in real terms. I'd guess that if they were making them mainly for their own use, they wouldn't have bothered with the cost of a good briquetting plant, which would be well over £100k.

There's a customer review of the ones we sell - and we've tried most of them over the years, at The Green Living Forum • View topic - Greenfires Firewood Briquettes Cheers, Andy

It's probably a fantastic fuel, but for all the reasons mentioned above, I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. I reckon it would be much better used by the poor people who are probably cutting it. As for the price - I reckon it's only going to appeal to the type of people who put a lot of effort into trying to impress their friends at dinner parties - "oh yes daaahling - we have our logs shipped over from Africa - we do like to support those less fortunate people, and we feel this is doing our bit" Cobblers! No thanks mate - I'll stick with a UK product! Andy

Yep - the Latvians have been busy this past week or so mate - had three here I think! Andy

The ash and damp newspaper trick works well IF it's only wood ash - if you've burned smokeless in there as well the ash from that will scratch the glass. I use a spray on stove glass cleaner from Calfire to tidy up customers stoves while I'm sweeping their chimneys - it's quite a strong alkali and takes your breath away if you breathe it in - but it's a lot more effective than the Hotspot aerosol spray cleaner which goes on like a thin white foam. Often with the Calfire stuff you can see the tar just sliding off the glass as you spray it on. Cheers, Andy

Tree monkeys truck is based on the old A series Ford - basically the Transits big brother. Reynolds Boughton would probably have done the conversion. At a later date they moved on to using Dodge trucks as the base model (50 series as far as I know) and then Dodge were taken over by Renault, so later ones still are Renault badged. There's an old video about the Renault version at [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9W0RSDbERU]Renault Truck Ind: RB44 dodge 50 Production Video 1991 - YouTube[/ame]

Likewise - and I've never heard of any other sweeps using these either. You'd be better off fitting a T piece to the back of the stove with a sweep access on the bottom of it. Will also avoid problems with stuff falling down the liner and then building up where it lands in the 90. I doubt very much that you'd get normal rods around a 90. Usual solution is the flexi nylon rods (white ones on ebay) or what I'm using now which is a bit heavier duty from Rodtech - though I don't think you'd want to spend that sort of money to sweep just your own chimney!! Cheers, Andy

£600 a tonne? Pfffttt - that's nowt - have you seen what "Straws" are selling at??! Only £900 a tonne for straw briquettes that make loads of ash - though that price does include a 40% discount! Some of these people are just pulling numbers out of the air I think! Our briquettes, which are better than both the above are just over half the price - the only reason we don't sell on fleabay is that by the time they took all their fees, we'd be making a loss on the deal! Andy

I'm not saying that they don't stop going to school for a week every time the kids are on holiday - I'm saying the ones I know ALL spend most of that week we see as "another bloody holiday for the teachers" working on school stuff. That's not what I'd call a holiday. And ALL the ones I know start work well before the kids do. I know five teachers as friends in different parts of the country - and they ALL work way more hours than many people would imagine. I think the last "official" average number of hours I saw was about 57 a week. And yes - all the ones I know do at least one day of every weekend too. There's a hell of a lot more to teaching than standing at the front of the class shouting at kids and scribbling on a blackboard! As I said - if it was such a great and cushy job, why aren't we all doing it? I certainly couldn't cope with it!

They must be different sorts of teachers that I know then. Yes, the school might close for a week or more on a regular basis, but all those teachers I know spend most of the weeks "holiday" marking assignments, doing lesson plans and a whole heap of other performance measuring paperwork and reports that the gummint insist on. They all work at least one day of every weekend too, and as for short hours, all those I know are at work soon after seven, and they always have work to bring home with them at night too. Apart from all that - I wouldn't wish some of the kids they have to deal with on anyone. Surely if teaching was such a fantastic job - then we'd all be doing it!

I have quite a few friends who are teachers mate, and to be honest, you're way off the mark there. Most of them work more hours than I do... Andy

Exactly mate - the thinking being that the quicker everything gets closed down, the longer the wood will last I guess. It's possibly not such a problem when a stove is running 24/7 like yours, as the whole chimney will be warmer than one servicing a stove which gets lit at tea time. I see liners every week though that are totally blocked - they only call me out when nothing actually goes up the chimney any more! Usually a bit of grilling reveals it's wet wood and/or trying to overnight it wrongly that's the cause of it. On the plus side, when you go to a customer who does everything right, it's a pleasure to do the job - no problems getting up the chimney and a nice clean stove too! Cheers, Andy